The evening breeze gently brushed through the woods, carrying the sound of dense foliage rustling in a tranquil "swish."
Hilke, who could also be called Amy, stared blankly at Sherlock, who was smiling at her. She slowly reached out and grasped the hand that was propping up his chin.
"John..."
Her voice trembled, just like her quivering heart, as she called out the name of the person she had spent seventeen whole years searching for without success.
Sherlock blinked at her, patted her head with his other hand, and sighed with emotion.
"You've grown into a young woman now, but your temperament has become increasingly cold. That's not your fault, though; it's your old man's fault. When I told him to leave the Department of Mysteries, I urged him to spend more time with you, but I guess he didn't listen. Don't blame your father, though; that's just how he was. If it weren't for his personality, I wouldn't have gotten to know him in the first place..."
Just as Sherlock was rambling on like an elder, Hilke suddenly hugged him tightly!
Warm, soft, and still trembling slightly, she pressed against his body, leaving Sherlock with a look of astonishment on his face.
He held his arms out, at a loss, not knowing where to put them.
The young girl's sobbing sounded in his ear. She murmured in a trembling voice that was no longer cold, but filled with sorrow and lingering despair.
"I felt that you would leave... but I couldn't tell what kind of leaving it would be... I thought... I thought you were already dead..."
Sherlock was silent for a long time, then sighed with a complex expression.
His face softened, and he gently patted Hilke's back.
"I'm here now, Amy. Just as I told you, there are meetings and partings, and partings and meetings. We were bound to meet again sooner or later, just like now."
Hilke wrapped her arms around Sherlock's waist, holding on tightly, as if afraid he would disappear again.
After a long while, Sherlock gently pushed Hilke away, wiped the tears from her face, and said with a smile.
"You're a young woman now; you can't act like you did when you were a child."
The corners of Hilke's mouth turned down slightly, as if she were very dissatisfied with Sherlock's words.
"I am two months older than John."
She seemed to be deliberately emphasising something, but Sherlock didn't pay it any mind. Instead, he patted her head again and turned to look at the tombstone engraved with Eddie's name.
"Can you tell me? What happened after I left, and how did Eddie... meet his end?"
Even now, Hilke still held onto Sherlock's arm tightly, not letting him leave her side for even a second.
"Dad died in the third year after you went missing."
Hilke had controlled her emotions, but the sorrow hidden deep within her voice could still be heard.
"That day, after coming out of the Department of Mysteries, he was struck by Dark Arts. St. Mungo's could do nothing about it, as the damage the curse caused to his body could not be completely eradicated. But after only a month of recuperation, he insisted on being discharged."
"At that time, the Ministry of Magic launched a month-long search for you, but couldn't find you anywhere. Because you entered the Ministry of Magic through special channels, they couldn't find your specific information, only knowing that you had an uncle who was living at the Leaky Cauldron."
"However, Prince disappeared with you, and you both vanished as if into thin air, leaving no trace."
"Dad was also constantly looking for you. After he was discharged, he didn't return to his post immediately, but took me with him to search for places where you might have appeared."
"He asked me to sense it, and I tried my best to guess, but you were nowhere to be found. Just as you said at the very end, you were going to a place where no one could find you, and indeed, no one could. Dad took me searching for over half a year, visiting every place in all of Britain where Wizards appeared, but we still couldn't find you."
"By that time, the Ministry of Magic had already announced that you had died in that battle, and they even posthumously awarded you the Order of Merlin, First Class. But Dad and I never believed you were dead, because you had said you wouldn't die, that you must still be alive."
"In the end, he returned to his post as an Auror. Although he didn't tell me, I could sense that he thought you might have been captured by Death Eaters. In the days that followed, he became increasingly reckless, and he never returned home again."
Her voice suddenly stopped, and she fell silent.
Sherlock didn't rush her, but waited quietly.
A moment later, Hilke took a deep breath.
"Then, he died two months before the Dark Lord's forces completely collapsed."
Her voice was calm, but the calm was clearly mixed with painful sorrow.
"The injuries he had accumulated over the years prevented him from dodging that Killing Curse."
"Because of Dad's death, I became a homeless orphan. Just when the Ministry of Magic was worrying about how to handle me, that woman returned. She verified her identity to the Ministry of Magic and wanted to take me away, but she didn't care about Dad's funeral at all."
"I was all the family Dad had left, but I was less than ten years old at the time. The Aurors voluntarily held a funeral for him, but they didn't know where it would be appropriate to bury him."
"Eventually, Dumbledore helped arrange this spot in the Forbidden Forest. By that time, that woman had already obtained custody of me, and I had to, and could only, go to Germany with her."
"Dad's death made me start to doubt my own feelings at the time, wondering what kind of leaving it was that I had sensed."
"I had the Aurors help me set up another tombstone right next to Dad's grave, and I buried everything related to you there. Only that photograph, I kept one for myself."
Sherlock couldn't help but ask at this moment.
"The woman you mentioned... is she your mother?"
Hilke's voice became very cold again, even colder than before.
"In name only."
"She took me back to Germany because she realised my talent. To hook up with the husband of the then-Director of the Department of Mysteries at the German Ministry of Magic, she changed my name and sent me into the German Ministry of Magic's Department of Mysteries. She deliberately made that Director value my talent, forcing her to spend most of her time teaching me knowledge about Divination, so she could take advantage of the situation."
"That woman's plan succeeded. Three years later, she got bored again, dumped the man, and even deliberately and boastfully told my teacher, who regarded her as a friend, the whole story. In the end, the teacher, filled with hatred for her and me, died of illness in the hospital."
"From then on, I stayed in the German Ministry of Magic's Department of Mysteries and never left again."
After listening to Hilke's story, Sherlock could imagine—but dared not dwell on—how the little girl who didn't even know how to smile had experienced his departure, attended her father's funeral, been taken to a foreign land by a mother she had never met, and then been used as a tool.
Seven-year-old Amy, though not good at expressing emotions, did not mean she had none.
And the current Hilke was like someone who had completely shut herself off, using a cold exterior to hide away the little Amy who held a pinwheel, no longer interacting with anyone, until today.
Back then, John had told her the world was beautiful, yet he had personally taken that beauty away, and ever since, she had not felt a shred of it.
Facing cold people all day, how could she truly smile?
This time, Sherlock took the initiative to hug Hilke.
He didn't speak, nor did he make many promises; he just said softly.
"I'm here now."
Hilke didn't answer; she silently buried her face in his shoulder, just like Amy used to.
"Do you know who the Death Eater who killed Eddie was?" Sherlock asked calmly.
"It was Bella." Hilke's voice came from his shoulder. "She was later captured and sent to Azkaban, where she was sentenced to life imprisonment."
A smile appeared on Sherlock's face, but it was a very cold smile.
"I really have a connection with her. It's good she didn't die; I'll remember her."
His voice returned to a gentle tone.
"And your eyes? What happened to them?"
Hilke still kept her face buried in his shoulder and said softly.
"They were contaminated by an hourglass in the British Ministry of Magic's Department of Mysteries. Whenever I focus my attention on something, the past experiences of that object are forcibly projected into my mind, and it causes damage to my eyes. Since the day you left, I've worn this black ribbon. At first, I wasn't used to it, but later, I learned a type of magic at the German Ministry of Magic, which is equivalent to gaining another way of seeing."
Sherlock pressed on her shoulders, gently pushing her back a distance, and through the black ribbon, he could faintly see the pair of pale golden pupils inside.
"I will find a way to help you with this. That hourglass is not something particularly rare; there must be a way to solve it."
Hilke didn't seem to care very much about this, and she pursed her lips and said.
"With John here, nothing else matters."
Sherlock looked at her and smiled silently. It wasn't like a promise, but more like stating a fact.
"I will always be here."
Afterwards, they sat side by side in front of Eddie's tombstone. Hilke held the worn-out pinwheel in her hand, listening quietly as Sherlock told her about "John" and "Prince."
He told Hilke that Prince was Snape, and also spoke about his purpose for entering the Ministry of Magic, the circumstances of meeting Eddie, his experiences in the Ministry of Magic, and so on.
But before Sherlock could speak for long, he really couldn't hold on anymore and fell asleep with his head tilted.
In his daze, he consciously avoided letting his head fall towards Hilke's side, but after he closed his eyes and fell asleep, Hilke took the initiative to lay him down beside her, with his head resting on her lap.
Sherlock was extremely tired, but before he truly fell asleep, he still had some shallow consciousness.
In a blur, he felt a faint, delicate fragrance lingering at the tip of his nose—a scent that belonged exclusively to a girl.
"Will John stay at Hogwarts as a Professor forever?"
A soft, gentle voice sounded in his ear. Sherlock felt his ear itching, as if surrounded by a warm breath.
He responded in a slow voice.
"I... suppose so..."
Hearing the affirmative reply, Hilke still didn't lift her head. She just looked at Sherlock's face silently, as if she could never get enough of looking at it.
Unknowingly, the corners of her mouth lifted slightly, of their own accord, without any help from anyone.
A fish-belly white appeared on the horizon before the arrival of dawn. The night sky gradually faded away, and the morning breeze brushed through the forest. In this transition between day and night, the smile on the girl's face was the most beautiful thing in this world.
...
When Sherlock woke up, it was already afternoon.
He opened his eyes in a daze and stared at the ceiling for a while before realising he was lying on the bed in his office.
He got off the bed, looked at the familiar surroundings, couldn't help but stretch relaxedly, and shook his head with a smile.
The experience of returning to the past really felt just like a dream he had just had.
But the small metal badge-shaped box on his desk and that old photograph were telling him that these were reality.
It must have been Hilke who sent him here, but he didn't know where she had gone now.
After washing up, Sherlock sat at his desk and picked up the small metal badge-shaped box.
This item was something Eddie had handed to him before leaving the Department of Mysteries, asking him to keep it safe.
And its ultimate source was the Death Eater Sherlock had blown up, Bella's brother-in-law—Rabastan Lestrange.
The shape of the box was clearly the Lestrange family crest.
And the thing inside the box...
Sherlock gently opened the iron box, and inside lay a seemingly very ordinary brass key.
Looking at that key, he smiled with pleasure.
And just at this moment, a rough knocking sound suddenly rang out outside the door.
Sherlock closed the iron box again, then put it back into his pocket, and told the person outside to come in.
Snape walked in from outside with a gloomy face.
"What exactly is the use of that magic notebook you asked me to pass on to Lily?"
Last night, Snape had tossed and turned in bed, unable to sleep all night. In the morning, he went to see Dumbledore, which is why he only had time to ask Sherlock this question now.
Sherlock yawned, raised an eyebrow, and said.
"First, go call Harry over. Let's be clear beforehand: I'm not sure myself if it will work as I imagined. That magic was only a theory to begin with, but regardless, there can't be a worse outcome, right?"
And just when Snape found Sherlock.
In the German Ministry of Magic, inside the office of the Director of the Department of Mysteries, the current Director, Kruger, looked with shock at the report Hilke had submitted with a blank expression.
"You want to resign!"